The Boston Red Sox’s Monday night contest against the Los Angeles Angels, the first of a three-game series, could not have started off in a worse way. Starting pitcher Richard Fitts, who entered the night with a clean 2.70 ERA across four starts (20.0 innings of work) thus far this season, melted down as the Angels teed off of him in the top half of the first inning. Fitts barely got through the first inning after allowing six runs (five earned), setting the stage for a 7-6 Red Sox loss.
Fitts has been so good through the first eight starts of his big-league career that no one could have foreseen him getting shellacked by the Angels, a team that ranks 20th in runs scored per ballgame, the way they did in the first inning. This was a humbling moment for the 25-year-old rookie, who admitted how terrible he feels after letting down the Red Sox with the worst start of his MLB career.
“Horrible. I felt our team did enough to win tonight outside of me. So I feel terrible about it. Put us in a terrible spot not just for this game, but for days to come with our bullpen, too. So nobody hates this more than I do,” Fitts said, per Christopher Smith of Mass Live.
Indeed, the Red Sox had to rely on Hunter Dobbins to get them through the middle innings. In five innings of work, Dobbins allowed just one run, but that proved to be one run too many as Boston scored just six runs. And in the first game of the series, this is not the start a team would expect at all.
Nonetheless, Fitts has proven in his first eight big-league starts that he belongs on this level. The worst thing he can do is let this bad start snowball into something that would prove to be far more damaging to the Red Sox.
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Red Sox’s pitching outside of Garrett Crochet has question marks
Garrett Crochet has been everything the Red Sox needed him to be and more; he has been excellent in fronting the team’s rotation, boasting a 1.98 ERA through 13 starts. But the rotation behind him has been very inconsistent, and Fitts, someone who was looked at as a potential top of the rotation answer, could not answer the call on Monday.
Using Dobbins to cover for Fitts would further deplete the Red Sox’s pitching corps, but Brayan Bello will be looking to do his best to get his team back to winning ways as he takes the mound in Game 2 of the series against the Angels.
